Hutta Ram Baidya, Nepal’s first agricultural engineer and indefatigable campaigner for the restoration of the Bagmati River’s environmental and cultural health, passed away this morning due to complications arising from a chronic lung condition at Norvic Hospital in Kathmandu. He was 94 years old.

The following article by award-winning environmental journalist Smriti Mallapaty was published in the first volume of La.Lit in January 2013.

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In Kathmandu, Hutta Ram Baidya is known as the “Bagmati man”. He has spent decades trying to restore the cultural status and environmental health of the Bagmati, the capital’s principal river. The High Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilization (BCIDC), responsible for implementing river restoration, formally acknowledged Baidya’s contributions in 2007. At an event organized in his honour by the Nepal Water Conservation Fund in June 2012, director Dipak Gyawali lauded Baidya as “the keeper of conscience”.

But the degradation of the Bagmati is a problem Baidya has not been able to solve.

The Bagmati has become Kathmandu’s sewer: it pools in the winter, rots under the summer heat, then swells in the monsoon, flushing away untreated sewage and solid waste produced by millions of Kathmandu residents. People protect themselves from the river in various ways: they pinch their noses, wear face masks, speed-walk, shut their windows, move further away, treat their water, dig deeper wells. Hardly any living organism can survive the worst-polluted stretches of the river in the city’s dense urban core.

To get to Baidya’s house I have to cross the river at just such a stretch. There’s tension under the Thapathali bridge – two days after my visit the government will send in riot police and bulldozers to evict squatters settled along the river bank, as part of its river rehabilitation work.

What does Baidya think of the river’s state? What of his own attempts to save it?

Hutta Ram Baidya leads most of his casual visitors to a waist-high cement platform on his patio to show them the model of Gandhi’s spinning wheel he smuggled out of Allahabad in his college days, and the “khutruke” chest he designed for collecting coins – named after the sound the coins make as they drop – khutruk, khutruk.

If the visitor stays longer, she will be shown more. The gluey lids of Baidya’s swollen eyes lift – the left more than the right – and peer through the thick lenses that rest on a tripod of high cheekbones and beaked nose. His slim lips tighten. “Have I shown you my workshop?” he asks, meaning “May I?” No. Yes. He gives me a wide smile.

There was a time when Baidya would flit down to his workshop to hammer, chop, or boil a solution out of any problem. These days he can’t trust his worn body of 92 on the narrow staircase, and can do little more than dictate the hypothesis of a solution. When he stands up with the help of his cane, I follow, and then lead him carefully down the stairs. “I designed this house myself,” he says of the open-terraced, two-storey building. All the doors we pass are padlocked, except for the one to his workshop. Baidya’s gaze softens as we enter the dark, dusty room.

He tunes his ensemble of instruments as we pass them – from the carpenter’s clamp to the chemist’s flasks, from the butcher’s knives to the gardener’s rake. He lifts a saddle as if to go riding, then peers into an incubator. He shows off a few of his creations: the model of a smokeless chulo, or stove, which he invented for his rural development projects, and a pineapple cutter he designed for a friend’s factory. There are several sculptures developed for interactive learning programmes, including a 3D flower with moveable parts, as well as a light tracer box and a stand to which goat jawbones of various sizes have been nailed. His latest invention is a modification of a blowtorch for zapping weeds.

A rat scampers past us. Baidya lunges at it with his cane. His execution is as slow and feeble as his wit is quick and cutting; the rat simply skips past the raised stick.

“I am a negative man,” he says as we exit the workshop, perhaps depressed by the undermining effects of age on his body.

Diminished by age or not, Nepal’s first agricultural engineer has always been a man committed to finding technical solutions for human problems. Dhan Bahadur Magar, a journalist who believes that the future of Nepal lies in agricultural development, has spent the last two years chronicling Baidya’s life for a forthcoming biography. Magar admires his subject’s moral integrity – he calls him Bā (father) out of respect – and checks off the life lessons illustrated by Baidya’s experiences, only occasionally questioning his unyielding character.

Baidya didn’t follow the family trade. “Hutta Ram bā always wanted to be an engineer,” says Magar, who traces his subject’s lineage back to the ayurvedic physicians of the mediaeval kingdom of Simraunghad, in what is now Parsa district. Baidya’s father Ratna Das served as the first medical doctor of Nepal.

Born on January 10, 1921, Baidya was a playful, curious child. He would play with his best friend Krishna by the temple behind his house, among the grapevines, holy basil, and pomegranate plants, where a green snake would sometimes bask in the sun with them. The Tripureshwor complex he lived in had a palatial setting. Tukucha, a tributary of the Bagmati, flowed past the property, and Baidya would visit it regularly for ritual purification, prayer, and play. “My Bagmati”, he called it.

In the kitchen, Baidya would admire how his mother and sister used the grinding wheel to make wheat flour for roti. And he loved to play with the John Crouch microscope, binoculars, and toolbox his father had brought back from a trip to England with Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher Rana in 1908 – a state visit undertaken, among other reasons, to open imports for industrial, agricultural, and scientific machinery.

Ratna Das passed away when Baidya was 14. While his two elder brothers went on to study medicine in Calcutta, Baidya decided to nurture his childhood interests. On a trip to Birgunj, he slipped away to Uttar Pradesh to inquire how Nepalis could get scholarships to study agricultural engineering in India. In those days, access to education in Nepal depended less on wealth than on the social standing of one’s family vis-à-vis the ruling aristocracy. Eventually, Baidya was able to secure permission to enrol in the agricultural engineering programme at the University of Allahabad.

Enterprising as he was, Baidya felt insecure because his English was much weaker than that of his classmates. He remembers his first presentation, when he stared at his class in anguished silence for the whole two minutes allocated to him. A mediocre student, he regularly failed his practical exams, and would have failed the course entirely if not for his professor’s leniency towards foreign students. Since Baidya expected to become a government bureaucrat, he saw little value in the applied areas of his education. He describes his attitude at the time: “I thought to myself – I am not going to drive a tractor. I am going to be a boss of the people who drive tractors.”

Back from India, Baidya joined the civil service in 1947 and married a very young Sharadha Rajbhandary the following year. As an agricultural engineer, Baidya earned 1500 rupees per month – a princely sum in those days. “To get a job at the time, you needed to make an offering of coins and bow to the Ranas,” notes Magar. “He did all of that.”

Baidya spent the next 14 years as a government bureaucrat in rural agricultural development, then two decades as a consultant, before working for the Peace Corps. His professional experiences informed his worldview, and he developed a set of standards to live by. “In a systematic, scientific way, I developed this philosophy after I returned from college and started handling agriculture extension,” he says, referring to the services provided by the government to farmers.

An engineer at heart, Baidya has a fundamental faith in technical solutions to solve human problems. Even in recounting the moment of his wife’s death, he appears to blame a defective washing machine and the fact that he couldn’t fix it in time.

“She died in this house,” he recalls. “We had a washing machine. I was in the courtyard when my wife cried, ‘Come up, the machine is wrong.’ I said, ‘I will come and look at it – don’t cry, don’t shout.’ But then I heard her shout, ‘Call my second son!’ In our culture, the younger son is closer to the mother. When I went back up she fell from the chair she was sitting on. I took her on my lap. She cried out, ‘Where is Bijaya? Where is Bijaya?’ and collapsed.”

“What happened? Did the machine do something to her?” I ask.

“The inner part of the washing machine that mixes the water was missing. It was not working. The machine is still on my rooftop.”

“But what happened to her? Did she have a heart attack?”

He pauses, perhaps grasping for an alternative history, the possibility that she might have lived had he fixed the washing machine. “Yes, a heart attack. The doctor had told her not to work. But the pressure from the machine was stronger than her heart could withstand, and she died.”

Baidya understands, of course, that technical solutions are not the whole story. His position is qualified by three simple requirements – that solutions be achievable, sustainable, and universally applicable. Achievable, in that the problem solver is personally invested in solving the problem: ideally, one should be solving one’s own problem. Sustainable, if problem-solving is an active process. One can’t learn to drive without sitting in the driver’s seat, Baidya says. And universally applicable when it is simple, and achieved using or reusing minimal resources in as socially inclusive a manner as possible. “What can you do with what is available in a poor man’s house?” He suggests turning the bed over to make a board on which children may learn to write with charcoal picked from the hearth, for instance.

Of the three conditions, the last is the most surprising to find a man of his stature living by. A casual observer might confuse his principles for miserliness, especially when he suggests using the nib of a dried-out highlighter as a paint brush, and refuses to throw away even the smallest scrap of paper. But his principles take shape as human qualities, and have become the standards by which he judges others.

On one of my earliest visits to Baidya’s home, I manage to fit all of his microscope slides into a tiny box. He pats me on the back, grateful, but also pleased that I should be able to employ my hands to solve his problem. The next day, I am asked to fold a sheet of paper in such a way that it may be cut into a five-point star with a single snip – if I manage it once, I will never forget how. From then on, he welcomes me not so much as an interviewer than as an apprentice. My “training” continues, with regular inquiries into whether I am “satisfied with the progress”.

I want to know how these principles relate to the river that brought me to him. But at meeting after meeting, Baidya resists talking about the Bagmati, eventually withdrawing from it entirely. “Just for a few hours, maybe even a few days, can you forget about the Bagmati? Shift your programme from Bagmati to non-Bagmati,” he says.

Magar is no different. He ends weeks of a thorough narrative with a rather short spiel on Baidya’s Bagmati-related work – allocating a minute per year for Baidya’s 20 years of work on the river. Baidya, too, seems resigned. One day, he declares, “I might die any time, any minute.”

“Are you not afraid of dying?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Now, there is nothing left that I can do,” he says, referring to the Bagmati.

I wonder about this. With all his purpose and drive, how does Baidya address death? How does a man who can’t but apply himself retreat from the challenge closest to his heart?

In the early 1990s, when the effects of rapid urbanization and population growth began to transform the river, Baidya attempted to reverse the damage to the river. By then, his wife had passed away, his children were abroad, and he had retired from the Peace Corps.

Naturally, he took the approach that had worked so well for him in the past.

He started by trying to bring the public closer to the river. On a trip to Egypt, he had been astounded by the public’s rejection of their ancient civilization, and their apathy towards the Nile. He drew the conclusion that attachment to a coherent historical identity was integral to maintaining riverine health. The notion of a “Bagmati Civilization” was conceived to unify Kathmandu Valley denizens in a shared cultural heritage that revolved around the river.

“Everybody knew about sanitary discipline along the river,” Baidya recalls, but amnesia had now settled over the civic conscience of his childhood. In 2011’s Reigning the River,* Anne Rademacher relates how the Bagmati Civilization theory “identifies two consequential strains of forgetting: a general social forgetting of the rivers and their significance and an administrative forgetting – a failure of the state to adhere to its river stewardship responsibilities.”

Baidya believed action was necessary, but, as Rademacher explains, such action “could only be taken by a populace fully conscious of the unique cultural attributes of the Kathmandu Valley and its rivers. Baidya referred to this consciousness as “remembering the Bagmati Civilization,” and he elaborated the details of Bagmati Civilization history in widely circulated publications, interviews, and speaking engagements.” By tying issues of river health to long-held social and religious traditions, Baidya was suggesting that the way forward was to journey backward.

In 1997, Baidya wrote a paper titled “The Endangered Bagmati Civilization of Kathmandu Valley”, which summarized the genesis of the Bagmati Civilization, tracing it to the legend of the Bodhisattva Manjushree who is said to have drained the Kathmandu Valley’s waters by slicing into Chobhar. Rivers took shape and the fertile land proved ideal for human settlement. Over the centuries, Buddhist tantrics, Hindu saints, royal dynasties, traders, and plunderers added character to the Bagmati Civilization. But the narrative of cultural maturation ends around the time of King Mahendra’s reign, beginning half a century ago. The socioeconomic dynamics that followed engendered only disrespect for the river, Baidya claimed.

Besides evoking a sense of a collective loss, Baidya called for active public involvement in river improvement using low-cost home-grown technologies. Early on, as part of the “Save the Bagmati Campaign”, he organized the community for a Pashupati clean-up, shaving bamboo poles for garbage-pickers himself. He suggested that people collect discarded shovels to build barriers against riparian sand and water loss. He wrote articles about the need to construct gabion dams to prevent rapid sediment loss, plant trees, and prevent construction along the river banks.

But Baidya could not transform the awareness he had raised into a popular action-oriented movement. Disillusioned, and without a workforce, he gradually withdrew from public engagement. He felt sidelined by a force too powerful to resist, a force that defined all modern interactions with the river, especially those involving the state.

Money, he thinks, was the cause of his isolation.

“People have started believing that the Bagmati is simply a source of money,” he says. Society has pinched Saraswati to plump Laxmi, forsaking knowledge to pay court to that quick-drawing gambler of a goddess: “Money is honoured. If a person has money, he is honoured.” This new value system has created incentives that encourage people to mine the riverbed for sand, extract water, and skimp on wastewater treatment and solid waste management.

One afternoon, a pair of reporters for Kantipur Television charges into his room unannounced. They ignore me and point their camera and microphone at Baidya for an impromptu interview. He warily agrees to engage.

“What was Kathmandu’s environment like when you were young?” asks one of the reporters as she helps him sit up. She is probably looking for a generic comment about its formerly pristine state.

“Are you going to pay me?” Baidya inquires with a wily smile.

She smiles too, a courteous guest. She’s been here before and he has never asked for money.

“The other day I was ignorant. Now I have become knowledgeable. Without money I won’t do anything anymore.”

Her bangles jangle. She tries to be patient, but she is short on time. Her mobile rings. The driver is waiting for them on the busy street outside.

Baidya doesn’t back down. He has the whole day to spare, and he is beginning to enjoy himself. “What productive value do you get from this visit?”

She rephrases her question.

He responds, “We were disciplined. For us –”

“No, Kathmandu. How was Kathmandu?”

“It was disciplined.”

He leans back and eases into his usual lecture about Saraswati’s virtues and Laxmi’s vices, except this time Laxmi is wearing pants, evidence of cultural unravelling. “They’ve been swallowed by fashion.” He has a guilty audience before him – both the reporter and I are wearing pants.

Another ring on her mobile. Her time is up. She signals to the cameraman to stop recording, quickly ties up the conversation and thanks Baidya. She backs away, concerned about the decline of a man who’s just acted the fool before her. “He used to respond so eloquently,” she murmurs to me. “He’s really aged since then,” she says, as if to justify his behaviour. Or hers.

Before the reporters arrive, Baidya is telling me a story:

“An educated bird raised in a rice paddy flew out and landed on a coconut tree. He started pecking at the coconut, but ended up breaking his beak. His expectations were not fulfilled. He was educated, he could have done it, but he did not do it right.”

Though this is not his intention, I take the story as a useful metaphor for why Baidya’s efforts to save the Bagmati have been unsuccessful. As Rademacher points out:

An implicit effect of the Bagmati Civilization narrative is a clear accounting of which identity, class, and caste groups could stake legitimate claims not only to the riverscape but to the Kathmandu Valley itself. If the crisis of the rivers was a crisis of forgotten history, only those with a legitimate claim to that history could undertake effective restoration.

In using the Bagmati Civilization as a device for inclusion, Baidya excluded a large portion of the population of the Kathmandu Valley. This limited participation in what was meant to be a grassroots campaign.

In the last 60 years Kathmandu’s population has grown from less than 200,000 to almost two million (three million in the whole Valley), largely as a result of migration from the villages. In his 1997 paper, Baidya stops short of including these migrants in his historical and cultural narrative of the river:

Unfortunately, however, for the last three decades immigration became an influx of unmanageable dimension. Different ethnic groups from all over the present day Nepal and beyond its national boundaries moved into the valley. No attempt was made by the new comers to understand, to accept and to respect the Bagmati Civilization of Manjushree. There was no time for cross-cultural orientation between the immigrants and the old residents. They could not understand and accommodate themselves within the available civil facilities and the cultural structure of the valley.

Since Baidya’s efforts, other groups have formed that draw on various associations with the river. At Sankhamul, the volunteer Bagmati Sewa Samiti is reconstructing the ghāt, the steps leading down to the river. The Nepal River Conservation Trust is run by a group of river guides who host the annual Bagmati River Festival. Actors such as the state (which Baidya dismisses as having contributed to the devaluation of the river) have appropriated the civilization narrative to buoy their own efforts. The government’s latest Bagmati Action Plan (BAP, 2009-2014) describes a familiar story of kings and commoners building inns, travellers’ shelters, stone water spouts, and temples along the river. “It is widely believed that the civilization of the Kathmandu Valley starts from the Bagmati river,” it asserts.

The BAP also draws on concern for nature and aesthetics, and on the potential for economic development through river development – an idea Baidya was loath to incorporate into his arguments. “Conservation of the Bagmati river system is one of the pressing issues we have to deal with in order to transform this city into a real capital city,” Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai said at a recent symposium organized by BCIDC, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the Asian Institute of Technology’s Alumni Association. Work on the Bagmati needed to be “directed to emancipate people from socio-cultural discrimination and poverty.” River restoration, Bhattarai felt, was not only part of Kathmandu’s modern development, it would also improve the socioeconomic condition of the city’s inhabitants, including the very poor.

Baidya’s small-scale solutions did not match the scale and complexity of the problems facing the Bagmati either. Arbitrary and diffuse pollution of the river is now institutionalized and systematic – sewage and stormwater drainage networks funnel straight into the river. Wastewater treatment infrastructure is mostly non-functional, even while the infrastructure for water extraction is expanding exponentially. Activities like sand mining, solid-waste dumping, and washing along the river banks are unregulated. River transformation is no longer possible without coordinated action with strong support from the state.

On September 8, 2012, the government bulldozed 250 squatter homes under the Thapathali bridge, barely a few hundred metres to the east of Baidya’s Tripureshwor home. According to BCIDC chairman Mahesh Bahadur Basnet, the long-term plan was – and still is – to resettle the squatters on the outskirts of Bhaktapur. But the government had made no arrangements to provide shelter to the evicted squatters in the interim. A hasty decision was taken to move the now-homeless squatters to the abandoned Himal Cement Factory at Chobhar.

When I ask Baidya why he doesn’t like talking about the Bagmati, he brings up the Chobhar decision. He points to a large banner in his room, printed with a picture of himself and his three children at a religious event. He has glued a white A4 sheet over a dark blotch on the side of his daughter’s face – the result of unfortunate lighting – explaining that the mark “hinders my direct communication with my daughter.” Baidya says the government’s efforts to resettle the squatters at Chobhar is disfiguring the face of the Bagmati, and disturbing his relationship with his river. “Chobhar is the outlet of this valley. It is like Bagmati’s tika,” he says, referring to the religious mark Hindus wear on their foreheads.

Resistance from the locals eventually prevented the squatters from moving to the cement factory. After similar rejections at alternative sites, the government decided to relocate them to squatter settlements still standing along the river corridor.

In 1995, the Nepali daily Kantipur published a brief letter by Baidya titled “Let my Bagmati survive, even if I die.” It begins:

Dear Editor, I have had neighbourly relations with orphan mother Bagmati for the last 74-75 years. I cannot break this closeness.

Baidya continues by regretting the lack of government commitment to river protection, and ends on a sharp note:

We should be ashamed to see the destruction of culture in the name of development, but we are not. We should be sad, but we are not.

Let not tomorrow anyone say to us – thukka Nepaliharu! (Shame on Nepalis!)

Let my Bagmati survive, even if I die.

Neither Baidya nor the government have much to show for their efforts to save the Bagmati. But for Hutta Ram Baidya, it is a public loss, as well a very private one.

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*Rademacher, Anne. Reigning the River: Urban Ecologies and Political Transformation in Kathmandu (New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century), Duke University Press Books, 2011.

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Smriti Mallapaty is currently based in Japan and is an environment and science journalist. She was recently awarded the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation/UNCA Gobal Prize for coverage of climate change (Bronze).

I was submitting to the drone of Lou Reed against Metallica’s guitars when a friend called, wondering if I wanted to see Rajesh Hamal, onstage, presiding over a court of young actors including Karma, Diya Maskey and Dayahang Rai. The old and the not-so-new – how would these mash-ups match up?

It takes a brave man to step outside one’s zone. But after a certain point, it may be that even the most predictable among us feels compelled to try something different. Lou Reed was, probably, always different. But his swansong, 2011’s Lulu, surprised everyone. What did he hope to achieve in collaborating with Metallica? How did the art-rock legend and the thrash-lords of the ‘80s end up in the same room for long enough to even discuss the idea? You could say the same about Rajesh Hamal. What motivated the übermensch of commercial Kollywood to mingle with the thesp-inflected new wave of Nepali cinema?

Reed originally conceived of adapting Franz Wedekind’s notorious ‘Lulu’ plays, which tell of a young German woman who arrives in Berlin as a ‘small-town girl who’s gonna give life a whirl’, with avant-garde playwright Robert Wilson. But the truth is Metallica’s trajectory has not been as straightforward as its beer-soaked fan base may have imagined their own lives would be. The band’s artistic and commercial zenith, 1991’s Black Album, and their shift away from thrash metal thereafter, was considered a betrayal by many. No fan man himself, Reed may have heard in Metallica the kind of weary, teutonic soundtrack he imagined for Lulu’s downward spiral. And who could refuse Lou Reed?

In the case of Hamal, it is easy enough to imagine such a room, with such a proposition. The director of ‘Court Martial’, Anup Baral, as well as many of his actors, navigate both theatre and film with consummate ease. ‘Rajesh Dai,’ one such thesp may have laughed, ‘Aren’t you tired of the song-and-dance routine?’ And the man may well have answered ‘Yes…Yes, I am thoroughly sick of it.’

We have to thank Baral for belatedly bringing Hamal to the stage, and for disguising his bulging muscles in army olive throughout this adaptation of Swadesh Deepak’s Hindi original. As Colonel Rupak Singh, however, he has occasion enough to exercise his vocal cords. He is conducting the court martial of Private Ram Bahadur (Sudam Bk) for the premeditated shooting of two superior officers, and though the accused has confessed his crime there is much more here than meets the eye. It is the job of Captain Bikas Pokharel (Subash Thapa) to unearth the motives, and this he does through the careful interrogation of witnesses who provide comic relief perfectly at odds with the dramatic, wrenching denouement that delivers unto Ram Bahadur a form of poetic justice.

To witness stage and screen performers trade mediums can be a wonderful experience, full of discovery for both spectator and actor. When, as in ‘Court Martial’, it is done with such meticulousness and emotive charge, you have to wonder why theatre actors risk compromising their artistic visions by succumbing to the allure of the silver screen. But there are many answers to such a question.

A different sort of trial awaits those who dare venture into the world of Lulu. Here there be dragons: massive walls of guitar noise for Metallica fans, and disembodied, ragged chanting for Lou Reed’s. But one suspects neither’s hardcore base would appreciate the fusion of the two. There are no shredding solos, crunching riffs or Jamesian grunts for the former (try this for a sample), nor the unexpected melodies and gritty urban poetry the latter might hope for. Reed’s lyrics – delivered in monotonous chants that sometimes seem to be in a separate mix from the thunderous guitars that accompany them – are suited to Metallica’s dark, dystopian visions, though they are far more personal, ambiguous and androgynous. ‘I am your little girl/please spit into my mouth/I’m forever in your swirl’, Reed intones in ‘Mistress Dread’, early on in a double album’s worth of self-flagellation. But the revelation is more Metallica than Reed, despite being characterized as his ‘musical bitch’ on Lulu. Their grim accompaniment is contained yet loose, faithful to Wedekind’s singular vision, and never overbearing. And more conventionally melodic songs like ‘Ice Honey’ and ‘Dragon’ (I warned you) gel perfectly, providing the sort of nod-along payback no one might have anticipated in the wake of the derisive reviews that followed the album’s release. But that’s fusion for you. It doesn’t always work, no. But sometimes it does. Sometimes it does.

The Walls of Delhi, Uday Prakash, Translated by Jason Grunebaum, Hachette India, 2012.

Stories on cities, non-fictive accounts of their people, and grand narratives of their past and present have become a fad of late. Given its political and demographic position, New Delhi is naturally one to earn such interests. Like all big cities, Delhi has its allures of opportunity and advancement mixed in with its dark secrets and insatiable hunger. The Walls of Delhi, a collection of three stories by Uday Prakash, one of India’s finest contemporary Hindi-language writers, is set within the changing Delhi landscape. These are tales from its underbelly. It is a journey into the megalopolis’s subaltern mass, hidden beneath its sprawling infrastructure and glitzy exterior. The turmoil and tragedies in these quaintly South Asian stories has Delhi siting silent and brooding in the background.

Translated from the Hindi by Jason Grunebaum, Prakash’s The Walls of Delhi portrays a Kafkaesque world where the individual is trapped within the gridlock of bureaucracy and power. The trap hardly matters for his characters; they take it as part of their being. However, it is the few choices and the resultant hope that is the source of their greatest anguish. Prakash’s characters are so far beneath the power dynamics of the Delhi machine that they are mostly forgotten, like the flies that swarm around a garbage dump. Ironically almost, their survival is linked to their insignificance. To be noticed is dangerous, as revealed in the award-winning and highly popular Mohandas, the second story in the collection. Prakash’s stories shift through the voiceless mass of Delhi as he delves into their lives. The plots and twists are predictable while death, decay and disease central themea. Sadly and frustratingly, these are the certainties his characters have. But even here, there is the occasional resurgence of the inexplicable and magical, moments that last just long enough and are remembered just clearly enough to question the inevitability of these certainties.

The value of this translation is self-evident once one starts reading the book – it’s a hard book to put down or leave midway. It reveals a world where English is the language spoken from above and even in translation, resists any belonging to this world. The stories provide voyeuristic glimpses of the unnoticed and peripheral. They blur the lines between fact and fiction and taint the reader with the grime of the city.

Can you talk about the situation of English in Nepal?

Let me relate an incident from my childhood in order to answer this complex question. I was in Class Four in the sixties in a village primary school in Morang when the SLC-Fail headmaster (at least that’s what we were told about his admirable qualification at the time but in reality he hadn’t gone beyond Class Eight) introduced PK Rai as our English teacher. Until then we had no teacher who could teach English. In fact, whoever came from wherever in that Tarai hinterland – the malnourished migrant hill men, the grimy petty traders from India, the literate young locals – had been coaxed by the village elders to teach rudimentary arithmetic, Manoharpothi, and later, Mahendramala. It was the dawn of literacy in this eastern Nepali village. Basic literacy and the ability to conduct retail purchases of seasonal crops had qualified the Indian vendors to be our math teachers and the failure to pass middle school had qualified the hill men and the locals to be our Nepali teachers. And the village elders felt great pride in having pioneered literacy. Named after the then Crown Prince, the one-room school house itself had been built with donated tree bark and thatch (which we collected from surrounding villages and carried on our backs to the school site) for the fifth time in as many years.

PK Rai’s arrival, therefore, caused some commotion because, unlike the emaciated, ungainly hill men and paan-chewing, dhoti-clad Indian vendors, PK-Sir wore steel-frame reading glasses, and looked well-fed, well-read and spruced-up in clean shirts and ironed trousers. Most of all, he could speak English with whoever dared to do so with him. The rumor was that he was an I.A.-Fail, a matter of great pride for us, who had been privileged until then to be guided by the glamorous SLC-Fail headmaster. So, we preferred to think of PK-Sir as B.A.-Fail. That added extra glamour to his persona as a man from Kalimpong. No sooner did my father hear of PK-Sir’s arrival, he put me under his tutorship for a few months, given the fact that I had failed Class Three and had been promoted in the half-yearly exam to Class Four. Before he disappeared after a year or so, PK-Sir had left behind an impression on me about the intriguing magic of English and the goal of B.A.-Fail to which I could aspire.

This anecdote offers a glimpse of what it was like to grow up in a Nepali village in the 1960s, only a day’s walk north-east from Biratnagar. Although Nepal has made strides in education since, the situation of elementary education in many parts of the kingdom hasn’t improved much. So the question about the situation of English in Nepal is as complex as Nepal’s geopolitics itself. It’s both hopeless and hopeful. English, like Sanskrit education before it, has reinforced the divide between masters and servants, rulers and ruled, leaders and followers. On the one hand, it has produced through the aegis of private English-medium schools, missionary or otherwise, globally fluent Nepali entrepreneurs, journalists, high-level bureaucrats, army brass, and now writers; on the other hand, it has generated the masses of SLC-, I.A.-, and B.A.-Fails and their hopelessness and frustration with it. What we are witnessing now in Nepal is the head-butting between the privilege of patrician English and Sanskrit, on the one hand, and the rage and despair of the plebian vernacular, on the other.

What’s the quality of English teaching at Tribhuvan University’s English Department? 

The problem goes beyond Nepal to India, where English came systematically as a colonial ideology in 1835 with Thomas Babington Macaulay’s minute on English education. And most English Departments in India that produce M.A.s (there are only a couple that systematically train doctoral students in scholarly writing and research followed by a doctoral dissertation) have perpetuated Macaulay’s injunctions of producing a “class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” In this respect, T.U.’s Central Department of English has over the years struggled to chart an independent path with the help of American and British sources. In its curriculum, for example, it now has Cultural, Women’s, and Postcolonial Studies, critical theory and so on. These all are emerging and vibrant ways of looking at literature and the world. The Department now possesses faculty with graduate training in Britain and the United States, people who have in recent years successfully implemented a new curriculum more suited to the times. With the help of the Internet and personal visits, these new faculty members are in tune with state of the art teaching methods and curricula in the United States.

But the Department faces, like many English Departments elsewhere, unhealthy internal rivalries, mudslinging, acrimony and factionalism in addition to the systemic problems many other public institutions face in Nepal. There are severe limitations to what these new enthusiasts can do. Because of political pressures for admission beyond capacity, lack of flexibility in designing and implementing individual syllabi and assessing student performance, and an absence of adequate library facilities, the faculty has found itself handicapped in realizing its ambitious goals for graduate training at the Department. That is one reason why they have opened IACER (Institute of Advanced Communication, Education and Research), where they have all the freedom they desire in curriculum design, implementation and assessment. We have yet to see what effect the suspension of democracy will have on the ambitions of folks who had thought after the advent of people’s sovereignty in 1990 that they could accomplish whatever they wished. This is where Nepalis such as Samrat Upadhyay, who occupy academic positions in the West, can help both morally and materially by becoming the conduit for the exchange of ideas and resources.

Who do you think will contribute most to Nepali writing in English (NWE) – those educated in the West or in Nepal? 

Enrichment of Nepali creative writing in English is not of urgency right now in Nepal; what is more urgent is the reinstitution of democracy, its stability and smooth functioning so that the common people in the villages as well as in towns can once again feel that they are sovereign subjects and that their work and voice will ultimately make a difference in the life of the country. For that we need a different kind of Nepali writing in English, the kind of writing that embodies the conscience and voice of the people and expresses their pains and horrors as well as laughter. In this respect, Himal Southasian, the Nepali Times, and The Kathmandu Post have become the conduits of the people’s voice and conscience to the world community.

Ultimately, it does not matter where a person is educated, in Nepal or the West. Those who have been educated in Nepal may think that they know the country and its culture first hand and therefore have a more authentic voice but the educational system in Nepal is such that it does not foster independent critical thinking so that local talent could flourish. For example, almost all journalists who write for Nepali and English newspapers and magazines and have been solely educated in Nepal do so without any training in such writing while they were undergraduate or graduate students. I don’t know how they run the journalism classes but even now people receive college and university degrees in Nepal and India by memorizing and regurgitating in the final exams. So, how can such people suddenly begin to write professional pieces for the media? Those who write well in Nepal are autodidacts; their higher education has little hand in their making. Of course, like Arundhati Roy or Pankaj Mishra in India, Nepalis educated in Nepal’s English-medium schools may contribute to NWE but it’s not that important. A person who has had early schooling in Nepal but has been educated in college and graduate school in the West, like Manjushree Thapa and Samrat Upadhyay, can and will contribute to NWE. On the other hand, those who have been educated in the West all through, they may have better access to education and infrastructure but may have lost the first-hand experience of Nepali culture and may even have forgotten the language. In that case, like Jhumpa Lahiri and many others, they will have to find their own voice and subject matter. And that’s fine, too. We can take the case of V.S. Naipaul. Born of Indian ancestry in the tiny Caribbean island of Trinidad, Naipaul has made the entire world his subject matter.

So, it does not matter where one is educated but what matters is what kind of education one has access to and what kind of contribution one makes. Those who are capable of writing in English, whether educated in Nepal or the West, most likely come from the ranks of the Nepali elite. What matters here is whether they trumpet the interests of the elite or champion the cause of the common Nepali. Wherever one is educated, one has to suffer first before one can be a writer. Those South Asian writers who are educated in English do not have the opportunity to suffer from economic hardship but they have to find other kinds of suffering in order to be a writer of any significance.

What does the success of Manjushree Thapa and Samrat Upadhyay augur for NWE? 

Manjushree and Samrat Upadhyay have charted a new path. They have shown that Nepalis can write novels in English and be recognized. In the footprints of Rushdie and Naipaul and many other non-Western writers in English, they have shown that a person born in Nepal can write about Nepali subjects and still be a writer in English. In that sense, they are pioneers for other folks with abilities, ambition and urgency.

How do you rate Manjushree’s and Samrat’s fiction? 

Samrat’s and Manjushree’s writing has been noticed. They have been able to write as a result of a certain requisite family background, ambitions, institutional training and apprenticeship in the West. Samrat’s fiction has been recognized in the United States for its novelty in South Asian writing. The quality of literature is not independent of the contingency of its production and reception. For example, Siddhicharan Shrestha’s poem “Mero Pyaro Okhaldhunga” would have melted into thin air if Shrestha had stayed in Okhaldhunga and sung the praises of his hilly abode without the necessary infrastructure of publishing and textbook preparation in Kathmandu. Similarly, Manjushree published her works in South Asia, and because the infrastructure for book publishing and book reading in English in Nepal is still rudimentary, we do not really know how Manjushree’s fiction would have done had she worked and published in the West. I like both her books – her travelogue Mustang Bhot and The Tutor of History. But my individual preferences do not matter here. What matters is a host of other such things called the infrastructure or the conditions of possibility – the network of editors, advances, publishers, fellow writers, readers, prizes, bookstores, the culture of book reading and book buying, fans who idolize writers and buy their books even though they may not read them and so on. In this sense, Samrat has made a wise decision. He has chosen the United States as his workplace, where all the things I have mentioned exist. Even though Nepal is not a hot subject like India, except in terms of shocking things such as the royal massacre or the savagery of the Maoist conflict, the fact that Samrat is a South Asian voice has made the difference. Besides, his unique way of portraying the Kathmandu middle class has made him a new voice in South Asian writing, different from the writers who have piggy-backed on British colonialism to assert their importance. But we have yet to see if Manjushree and Samrat are able to sustain their momentum.

Be that as it may, I already admire Manjushree for her bold support for Nepali democracy and for her admirable work of translation in the Nepali Times. In this sense, I find her work more important than Samrat Upadhyay’s work but Samrat, too, is doing his best to write about things that matter. His recent op-ed in The New York Times about the suspension of democracy in Nepal is proof of that commitment. A writer cannot remain silent about matters of public concern in his or her home country. In this sense, both have measured up to the test by combining their aesthetics with political commitment.

Are there any technical or stylistic flaws in their writings that you wished they had improved on? 

At this point, these flaws do not matter. What matters is their continued productivity, vitality and growth. They have to find their own voice, their own paths as writers, and their own bliss. If they are really writers, driven by some inner volcano of emotions and thought, they will continue. If not, then they will dry up, like so many others. The desire for fame is only one of the many motives for a writer. I have had conversations with Manjushree and suggested that while she is keeping her feet admirably planted in her native soil, she should also tap into the writing community in South Asia and the West. This will provide energy, enthusiasm and motivation. So, at this point I’m not concerned so much about their stylistic or technical flaws as their energy, enthusiasm, vitality and productivity – and of course commitment. In a Third World context, a writer is not just a master of fantasy but a teacher, truth teller, and intellectual, whose responsibility it is to tell his or her society about itself and make it aware of its potential as well as flaws.

Samrat Upadhyay has been criticized in Nepal for pandering to Western tastes. Is this justified? 

Yes, I have kept abreast of the acrimonious exchange between Samrat, Manjushree and academic folks in Kathmandu. In one sense, this is business as usual. Literary critics are professionally trained to criticize creative writers because creative works contain in them a complex web of ideologies, something that even a writer is mostly unaware of because in the heat of the creative moment a writer embodies and expresses a complex set of social and cultural values. If a professional critic does not point out those hidden ideologies and values, who will? So, in one sense, this is just the nature of the beast. Professional critics, particularly of the postcolonial variety, have it upon them to point out the implications of representing the non-Western world to Western society in a particular way so that readers in the West, already either denigrating or exoticizing, either way missing the mark, may reinforce one or the other. At any rate, there’s no escape from such criticism – nor is there much room for escape from such representation given the historical contingencies of literary production and reception.

Toni Morrison and V.S. Naipaul have pointed out the predicament of a writer who writes about people who can’t read his or her works. “What are the implications for such literature?” Morrison asks. Much of Naipaul’s anger at the Third World stems from this anguish. This is a postcolonial predicament; there’s no escape from it right now unless there’s a fundamental revolution in non-Western societies and their consciousness about literacy and education. That’s why, a North African writer, I think he was either Algerian or Moroccan, recently rejected his country’s most prestigious literary award because he said that few in his country had read his books due to widespread illiteracy. I think it was gutsy rejection of the award. So it’s just the nature of the beast. But given the circumstances, Samrat should continue to portray society however he sees it through his writer’s lens. He will do his job by writing more fiction, and his critics will do theirs by critiquing him.

Now, if a Nepali writer writing in Nepali in Nepal had written the same novel, it wouldn’t have been even noticed because in Nepal, except for a few professional critics who read for various literary awards, who reads fiction for the sake of reading and pleasure or enlightenment? Literacy is low; there’s hardly any independent reading culture, as, for example, the Bengalis have. Because Samrat has written in English and published in the West, he has received widespread attention; the whole infrastructure of literary production and reception in the West has made his books living cultural artifacts. And Samrat should feel good that his works have been noticed both in the West and Nepal for their specific localized reasons and concerns.

And I think his rejoinders to these critics, too, have been good for the most part, especially the later ones, where he has focused more on the issues than on the geopolitical limitations of critics in Kathmandu, which I found at times a bit condescending. Folks in Nepal have little backing from the local infrastructure to answer back with equal strength to a professional in the Western academy.

How can NWE be different from, let’s say, Anglo-Indian writing?

India is a hot subject in the West right now. That’s why Anglo-Indian writing is hot. Nepal, on the other hand, is not a hot subject in the West. It is certainly exotic for the connoisseurs but not hot. As the BBC correspondent Daniel Lak pointed out in his recent column from Miami, people in the wider world do not much care whether Nepal sinks or swims. Of course, people would like to visit Nepal as tourists or climb its mountains but if Nepal sinks, they will sigh and say Nepal, too, went the way of many a failed state in Africa and Latin America. So, geopolitically, Nepal is different from India. And, therefore, NWE, too, is different from Anglo-Indian writing. Among other things, the overloaded colonial baggage is for the most part absent from Nepal. Like Ishiguro, Samrat has had to find his own unique subject matter because of the lack of privilege of latching on to the colonial bandwagon. And I think this is where Nepali writers who write in English suddenly become important because they are Nepal’s eyes, ears, and conscience in the wider world. They should stick to the truth they see from their own perspective after having seen, heard, and read what others have said about them and their works.

__________________________

This interview from 2004 was first published on suskera.org, a US-based literary webzine that featured contributions from Nepali writers. Suskera is now in partnership with La.Lit to republish articles from its archives.

There was a tea shop on one side of the dirt road that led to my home from the tarred main street in Janakpur. It was owned by a man everyone called Kachuwa. He was a small man, always wearing a dirty T-shirt or a ganji and lungi, and always smiling. Across the road was a small furniture factory with lots of planks, bamboo poles, and sawdust.

I was often asked to run to Kachuwa’s shop to get milk for tea when guests arrived unexpectedly, or to get a small amount of curd to use as culture for making more at home. Kachuwa was always nice to me and never charged for the small amounts of curd, though he knew that if we did not make at curd at home, we would have to buy it from him.

One morning, I must have been about twelve or thirteen, I saw that Kachuwa’s shop had been vandalized. The table where he displayed his wares – milk, curd, some cheap sweets, homemade biscuits – was overturned and the floor was splashed white from the spilled liquid. The large aluminum bowls with sweets had been toppled, along with the glass jars with the biscuits. The few benches in the shop were in disarray, some flipped over.

I was going out with my father to the market, and we stopped to inquire about what had happened. Kachuwa murmured something about an incident the night before. But he did not seem to be in a hurry to bring his house to order. He seemed oddly calm, but I could feel something was really not Kachuwa-like about his behaviour. My father said he would talk to him later about what had happened.

About two hours later, on our way home in a rickshaw, we made out a small crowd gathered in front of the shop. There is something about a mob that one immediately recognizes, be it in the streets of Kathmandu when “respectable” people get hold of a pickpocket kid or a small group of amused people stopping a motorcycle for having hit a kid (from the goat family). As we approached, we asked the rickshaw to stop and got off.

There was a young man tied to an electricity pole right by Kachuwa’s shop. A few men were holding planks from the furniture factory. One man had a long bamboo pole with which he was holding the semi-conscious young man upright. There was blood on the man’s face and he was drooling, but I could make out that he was a neighbour. I could tell that he had been beaten by the planks. Every once in a while, someone would again take a shot at the poor young man.

My father tried to intervene. The poor bidyarthi is already half dead, he said. What are you guys doing this for?

There was a commotion and I could make out some angry words. They were accusing my father of protecting a fellow upper-caste. I searched for Kachuwa in the crowd; he would surely confirm that we were closer to him than to the man tied to the electricity pole. But Kachuwa was squatting outside the circle of the crowd, seemingly aloof from the mob justice playing out there.

Some people in the crowd knew my father and stopped the anger that was starting to be directed towards him. This guy came drunk last night and thrashed Kachuwa and vandalized his store, one of them said. What else can we do?

My father suggested calling the police. They said they already had, after giving the young man the beating he deserved to make sure he never did anything similar again. The police would just take him to the station and release him without punishment, they said. It was essential that he be punished.

This was, in a way, justice meted out by the lower-caste labourers against an upper-caste hooligan. I felt strangely good because I knew the man tied to the electricity pole was a neighbourhood rival of an elder cousin. I disliked the man; he was one of those contemptible young thugs who pretended to rule our neighbourhood. But I would miss Kachuwa who, a few months after the incident, closed shop.

Kantipur Kurakani

“NC-UML must engage in a new discourse”

November 23

With the announcement of elections for Nepal’s second Constituent Assembly (mandated to write a constitution), election constituency Kathmandu-4 was in the spotlight – charismatic youth leader Gagan Thapa (Nepali Congress) going head-to-head with Nanda Kishore Pun (“Pasang”), the erstwhile commander of the People’s Liberation Army (UCPN-Maoist). Despite controversy leading up to the vote,  the result was a landslide victory for Gagan Thapa. Translated excerpts from a conversation with Kantipur’s Sudheer Sharma and Rajaram Gautam follow (with some changes to account for the poll results):

How do you feel, now that you have won by over 50% of the ballots cast?

As a candidate, I was sure of victory. The assurance I received from the constituency during the campaign further increased my confidence. But I often said to my supporters – the likes of Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Sushil Koirala have lost in previous elections, so we must continue to work hard. We campaigned with determination and the result was satisfactory.

There are two aspects to this (my victory). First, I did not only receive the votes of Nepali Congress (NC) supporters. Several supporters and well-wishers from other parties told me that they voted for me as they wished to see me in the Constituent Assembly (CA), despite the differing priorities of their own party. I must respect that. Next, many voters have expressed high hopes for me. But if I am unable to convert that hope into trust then it will erode away. I can’t get ahead of myself because I received the vote of the majority. That’s why I view my victory both with satisfaction and as a challenge.

Your opponent Nanda Kishore Pun of UCPN(Maoist) has claimed that the elections were rigged.

UCPN(Maoist) is allowed to raise questions about any aspect of the electoral process while abiding by the rules. Everyone has the right to prove his or her claims from within the boundaries of the process, instead of threatening to abandon and boycott the process itself. But these claims are childish, who is going to believe them?

Did you expect NC and UML to emerge so much stronger than UCPN(Maoist)?

Let us look at the election trend post-1990: NC gained an easy majority in 1991, UML was ahead in 1994, and NC emerged victorious again in 1999. Since they were a new power, the Maoists emerged victorious in the 2008 CA elections. This indicates that the Nepali voter is conscious of whom to award and whom to punish. This also shows that the votes won today aren’t permanent. Each party has its staunch supporters and those voters may always support the party. But the majority of the voters do no support any particular party, they fluctuate. In the previous election votes that used to go towards NC or UML went to the Maoists. Perhaps in some places people were coerced to vote for the Maoists but many people voted willingly because they thought the Maoists could be a vehicle for change. But those votes were not permanently allotted to the Maoists.

Why did the votes return to NC-UML?

There are three reasons for this. First, it’s a rejection of the position taken by the Maoists over the last four years on discussions regarding the type of constitution, society and politics for Nepal. The ideas of the Maoists did not represent the views of the electorate who voted for them. This applies to the Madhesi parties as well. The votes of those who previously voted for the Maoists and the Madhesis have returned to NC-UML. Second, for the general voter, good governance is an important issue. The electorate is now able to see what the new parties have done for good governance and where they have been unsuccessful. The new parties told the public that there are other reasons they should vote for them, ignoring the public’s desire for good governance. Third, the division of the party. When NC split it was crushed, UML lost the elections after it split and UCPN(Maoist) thought they would get away with a small scratch. The split must have had an impact. The same applies to the Madhesi parties.

The failure of the first CA was a collective failure of Nepal’s political leadership: why has UCPN(Maoist) borne the greater blame for it?

Those who voted for the Maoists in 2008 did not endorse the ‘People’s War’. UCPN(Maoist), which is one of the parties advocating change, joined peaceful politics and received votes on the basis of the belief that its leadership would be able to deliver. They joined the CA with that responsibility. The way UCPN(Maoist) presented itself in the CA might have seemed apt to its workers from the conflict period but was not acceptable to the voters. There was the issue of federalism, and the ‘People’s Constitution’, perhaps. Thinking that their voters would simply support them on these issues was a mistake. The voters wanted change within the system of a democratic republic, not an alternative to it. In addition, it seems that good governance, personal behaviour and so on became a basis for selection. Since 1990, within the parliamentary system, there have been many instances of discordant power politics. The voters perhaps hoped that the new power would put an end to this. That’s why the voters placed greater blame on the Maoists.

How will the new balance of power within the CA affect the issues raised during the previous process of constitution writing?

The shift in power will not affect the issues raised previously, if we take them up from where we left off. Regardless of how UCPN (Maoist) presented itself at the inception of the CA, by the time the body was dissolved their position was more or less similar to NC-UML’s. The issues we were most deadlocked on were federalism and the form of governance. NC and UML hold differing positions on the form of governance as well. If we had held the same view, perhaps this issue would have been resolved as well but now we need to negotiate on this. NC and UML hold the same view on federalism so the debate within the CA may be able to go in the direction these two parties want. For this election, NC and UML clearly presented their views on federalism to the public. The voters have already endorsed this view and to now claim that the public is not supportive of the form of federalism proposed by NC-UML would be strong-arm tactics.

Does this mean that NC-UML’s view that single ethnicity-based federalism should not be pursued has been endorsed? Or is there an agreement to not pursue federalism at all?

It would be a betrayal to say that federalism should not be pursued. There must be some people who feel that way, both among the voters and the candidates. But the truth is, NC-UML campaigned on the basis that single ethnicity-based federalism should not be pursued. I think NC-UML should demystify the issues around federalism. Society is vertically divided on the issue of federalism. NC and UML have a difference of opinion regarding the form of governance but I don’t think the voters considered this disagreement seriously when casting their ballots. The way in which the issue of federalism is deadlocked, it would be just a repeat of UCPN(Maoist)’s previous behaviour if we were to say that the decision must be made based on the wishes of the majority or the stronger power. It would not be appropriate to try and use our majority to get our way. NC and UML should accept the responsibility of convincing the opposing powers, parties and society and negotiating with them. It is important to pursue this action within and outside the CA. It will take us towards a positive result.

Previously, in order to fulfil their political aims, the Maoists first spread the idea of ethnicity-based federalism and later, single ethnicity-based federalism. NC-UML formed their position on the basis of these ideas. The media, society and everyone else followed that discourse. I believe NC-UML, with their new responsibility, should change that discourse. The argument isn’t that we will not allow ethnicity-based federal states but that it is not possible to form ethnicity-based federal states, given the distribution of our population. The 11 federal states proposed by UCPN(Maoist) are not ethnicity-based. It is not a political disagreement; it is simply a geographical truth. Why is society divided over an issue that doesn’t even exist? There are many challenging elements to be examined. There are those who feel that the federal states that were being created for them have been suppressed. There is another group that thinks that everything is being destroyed by emphasizing ethnicity. These are all products of the ideas perpetuated by UCPN(Maoist). We must amend this discourse.

While there are issues that could not be resolved in the previous CA, there are also those that have already been agreed upon. Does the CA that is currently being formed have to accept these decisions?

NC, UML and UCPN(Maoist) must all be faithful to their election manifestos. We all have an understanding to present a proposal at the first meeting of CA-II to endorse the issues agreed upon by the dissolved CA. There might be disagreements on which issues to present and how far back to go.

There might be new powers in the second CA; RPP-N will be more powerful than before. Will the new power balance not affect the already-resolved issues?

We might have a situation where we will have to negotiate with RPP-N, if we are to assume that they will have a meaningful presence in the second CA. But if NC, UML and UCPN (M) are to stand together on issues, based on our numbers in the CA, we can reach an agreement.

Does that mean that NC, UML, UCPN(Maoist) are in agreement on the issues of the republic, federalism, secularism, etc.?

We have disagreements regarding the management of these topics. Rather than focus on each topic, the three parties have to stand together accepting the mandate of the People’s Movement of 2005/6 and the issues raised then, as well as the achievements made after the 12-point understanding was signed. These parties must not split in three different directions based on the election results.

Do you feel that the potential resurgence of the right could affect transformative issues?

 If we take the “rise of the right” as a challenge and and unite to protect the achievements of the People’s Movement then there is an opportunity to institutionalize them. But if we choose to ignore the people’s mandate and take up positions according to our own convenience then it will give more space to such a resurgence.

UCPN(Maoist) has threatened to boycott the CA, claiming that the elections were rigged. Baidya’s party (which split from the Maoist party) boycotted the entire elections. How challenging is the road to the CA?

Once the CA is formed, the main issue shall be how NC-UML and other parties understand its mandate. We must not forget that the CA failed because UCPN(Maoist), as the stronger party, ignored the voices of NC-UML and the people’s mandate. NC-UML must not repeat the same mistakes.

It currently looks like UCPN(Maoist) intends to disrupt the CA process?

It’s an emotional response. Their defeat was unexpected and it has led to this outburst. After joining the democratic process, the citizen must be respected. The loss we suffered in 2008 was even more unexpected for us than UCPN(Maoist)’s defeat. We had never suffered such a defeat since the party’s establishment. So once UCPN(Maoist) accepts that victories and defeats are temporary, it will be easier for them to accept this. Also, they cannot escape the electoral process. There is no space for them outside of this.

If they refuse to join the CA must continue its work. Politics will be pushed towards conflict but the CA has no option but to proceed. The CA was necessary to avoid political conflict. If we devalue the CA and engage in conflict then everyone will have to pay the price for it.

Doesn’t this tendency to reject election results show the lack of maturity in our parties, democratic process and politicians?

Of course. If we are to consider the election results, we can see that the voters have matured and the democratic political process has regressed.

You have emerged as a powerful representative of the new generation, what kind of role are you hoping for?

 I want to play a role in the CA. This time I was given the responsibility to write the party’s election manifesto. Since the first CA, I have continued to work with my focus on constitution writing. If I am given an important role in the CA, I believe I can play an influential part in bringing the process to a conclusion. Many of the issues within the CA are artificial, and I think they can be resolved through negotiation.

If offered, would you join the government?

The first priority is the CA. The current people’s mandate is also an assessment of our generation. Previously, I had the opportunity to be involved in the CA but when there is no space (to work) a proper evaluation cannot be made. To translate into trust the hope the people have placed in me, I will try to find a role within the CA or the government.

(translated by Shlesha Thapaliya)

Too long have Nepalis felt compelled to follow the fortunes of overpaid Indian cricketers as they bully visitors on flat, dusty tracks only to be caught like rabbits in headlights on the lush pacy wickets of more temperate climes. Like our interest in Salman’s puffball pecs and Kareena’s pencil pelvis, this feckless fandom does not square with our natural suspicion of Big Brother. The result is an adulteration of the incandescent purity of sporting emotion. When India wins, we rejoice, but with a hint of guilt. We don’t go cavorting around the room, pumping the air, with a chorus of YEAH YEAH YEAH. When India loses, we don’t break down, break up, or even break a sweat. We snort and mutter about their ghee knees, and flick the channel to Salman and Kareena.

If only we had a team to support.

It seems to me Nepalis never got around to saying this until they did have one. Football was and still is so dominant that we almost never noticed just how talented our young cricketers were. We knew they were making waves in the under-15/17/19/21s, even though we didn’t see them on TV, but by the time the big league came around, our batsmen and bowlers were more likely to be washing dishes in Amrika than training hard for the next tournament. Trying to make a living as a cricketer was probably worse than being a writer.

And then the Paras Khadkas of the youth teams began coming through into the men’s team. Nepali cricket began to grow up. Sure, our fans were still likely to resort to street tactics at home games when faced with defeat, but increasingly, this became unnecessary. Suddenly, we were winning game after game after game. Suddenly, we had a real team. And when we overcame a sluggish start to win the Division Three League earlier this year, we were in with a real chance at World Cup glory.

Still, my father insisted on watching the dreary pyrotechnics of the India v. Australia slugfest. And on the day Tendulkar finally left the building, Nepal thrashed Denmark in our first match of the ICC World T20 Qualifiers. I continued to update him on Nepal’s irregular progress through a variety of grainy youtube streams. Just one more win and we’re through to the World Cup in Bangladesh next year, I exclaimed, while he grunted, Ho ra? Really?

The day arrived. For once, I felt envious of the thousands of Nepalis waving flags in the Abu Dhabi stadium. I couldn’t spot a single Hong Kong supporter in the stands, and perhaps it wasn’t surprising. Who would support a yellow man’s team of brown men led by a white man?

It was a humdinger of a match, as they say, a thriller. It went down to the wire. Hong Kong’s captain bust a finger wicketkeeping in the 18^th over, Nepal’s captain committed hara-kiri in the 19^th over, and Nepal blasted 13 off the last 6 balls to get over the line, just. As Paras Khadka admitted at the presentation, it was the biggest day in Nepal’s sporting history.

In 1996, rank outsiders Sri Lanka beat Australia to win the ODI World Cup. It was a coming of age, for as Shehan Karunatilaka says, “We had a full-blown civil war, a debt-ridden economy and a 14-year-old Test team that had been hammered around the world”. By the time 2011 rolled around, Sri Lanka was expected to win the ODI World Cup, at least by the Sri Lankans. But yesterday’s Sri Lanka is today’s Bangladesh, the reigning punching bags of world cricket. It must be tough for a Bangladeshi fan who grew up idolizing Indian swashbuckler Sehwag to hear him dismiss the chrysalis of your team as “an ordinary side”. But such is the fate of minnows, and against the tide, Bangladesh have registered a number of famous wins over the years.

Bangladesh, quite possibly, is tomorrow’s Nepal. We will go to the T20 World Cup next year, and we will most likely lose all our matches before being unceremoniously ejected from the high table. It will be gutting, but we will be screaming for our own tribe. When we cheer a batsman for hitting the ball out of the park, we will love him. When we curse him for missing the next ball and losing his wicket, we will hate him. But all will be forgiven, because there will always be the hope of a next time.

I want to feel the pain of being a Bangladesh fan. I want to feel the pain of losing, time after time, always in anticipation of the solitary win that will make it all worthwhile, that shaft of sunlight piercing the leaden clouds to light up just one spot of a grim landscape. I don’t imagine that cricket is the saving of Nepal, no. As Karunatilaka concludes, “Despite the fairytale of ’96, it wasn’t the cricket that ended our civil war. It was the tanks and the fighter planes.” Yes, sport can bring the nation together for a while, but after the streamers are taken down and the balloons lose their shape and drift about the legs of empty chairs like the wrinkled breasts of abandoned women, we all know there is work to be done, elsewhere. Cricket won’t write our constitution for us, but it will make reality a little more tolerable. Or tangible: the multi-ethnic nature of the Nepali squad may make it easier for Nepalis to feel a kinship across barriers that have been accentuated by the discourse on federalism.

Sport, then, fulfils a function similar to art. It makes us feel bigger and better about ourselves, and helps us transcend the limits of individuality and identity. In that, it can be a thing of beauty. So here’s to the big league. Here’s to a decade of being thrashed by the big boys, and brought down to earth by fellow minnows who we thought we’d long surpassed. Here’s to losing, and losing, and losing, as long as we win, once in a blue moon.

I took a walk to get out of the house and kill time before futsal in the evening.

I walked through Bishalnagar to Dhumbarahi, where I stopped at a chiyā pasal for tea. The sāhuni and a girl were sitting on stools in the front of the shop, chatting. I sat down and ordered tea and asked them if the Rāprapā office up the road had any flags. They said they didn’t know, but I could go there and ask. They looked confused by my inquiry. I explained that the flag wasn’t for myself, since I’m not a supporter, but for my friend’s son, who is a big fan of cows, and there’s a cow on the flag. I added that he was two years old. The sāhuni laughed. She had nice decorations in her tea shop, mostly pictures of wildlife and himals cut out from calendars. Much nicer than some of the stuff you see around.

I paid Rs. 12 for my tea and left. When I walked by the Rāprapā office I saw two old Bahun-looking men coming out, one dressed in a topi and regular office clothes, the other in an oversize t-shirt and baseball cap with the brim pointed slightly to the right. Maybe he was a “youth leader”. I didn’t go in. I didn’t want to deal with the people there and pretend to be a supporter or anything. And they probably wouldn’t have given a flag to a khaire like me anyway.

I walked out to Ring Road. Once I got there I wasn’t sure which way to go so I wandered out a road beside one of the tributaries of the Dhobi Khola, thinking I’d walk and see how long it would take before I came across some open land and agriculture, some feeling of a village. I didn’t come close. I just saw a few empty lots and gardens here and there. But I did meet an American study abroad student along the river, who sheepishly gave me a namaste from the other side of the road, and I asked him what he was doing there. He said he was from L.A. and that he was on a gap-year program after high school. The program was called “Where There Be Dragons”. He said Kathmandu was really different from Los Angeles but I didn’t ask him if he’d seen any dragons yet. I said goodbye and that I had to go meet friends. He seemed a bit lonely and I felt sorry but I didn’t want to give my number away to someone I had just met or anything.

I walked on until I realized I had come in a circle back to the Ring Road. Then I asked a Madhesi or Indian bicycle fruit-wālā which way was Mandikatar, and he pointed to the right, and I went that way, but I should have gone left. I walked to the right until I realized it was the wrong way and then I turned back, but on the way I found out what a false ceiling is. I found this out at the “False Ceiling Shop” in Sukedhara, which aroused my attention as I passed by the first time and when I stopped in on my return I discovered that a false ceiling is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. I was expecting something like a secret space for storing contraband, or something to do with magic tricks like the kind Houdini did. But it turned out it’s just a style of office building ceiling, with foam tiles. Like the ceiling in my university hall in the US that was said to be covering up asbestos insulation. Maybe I got my hopes up because of the place Kathmandu used to be in my youth, or because of my youth, a place where there might be hidden dragons somewhere. Like on one of the abandoned upper floors of the International Club in Sanepa, or down a narrow Thamel alley on a winter evening.

I walked to Mandikatar but it was still over an hour before futsal so I walked on, past the Kastamandap Madhyamik Vidhyalaya and an empty lot where cement mixers were being stored, on the edge of an escarpment from which I could see a view of the city out towards Bouddha. I was thinking that if I were a photographer I would have taken a picture of that scene, the empty lot and the urban sprawl in the background, the afternoon light on the houses that are eating up what little open space is left and leaving only the occasional empty lot like this one, used to store cement mixers.

I went to another chiyā pasal and this one was run by an older Limbu or Rai sāhuni. At first it was just me and one balding guy whom I took to be a Bahun or Chhetri drinking tea, but as time passed some young men and an older pair of Sherpa friends came in to have beer and kodo ko raksi. The balding man seemed eager to chat with everyone, and we got to talking. He told me he had worked as a cook in Dubai, Lebanon, and Iraq. I asked if he could cook falafel and chawarma and he said yes. I mentioned that I was on my way to play football and one of the Sherpas asked if I was going to the facility in Mandikatar. I said yes, and he asked if I knew that the place was owned by a Sherpa. I said I knew, he’s a friend of mine. He laughed and was obviously proud of this. He did not seem wealthy. He said he’d just been working for a trekking group in Pokhara and came back to Kathmandu in the past day or two. But he also said he had 55 yaks and chauri-gāi in his village in Khumbu.

Two thin, old Bahun-looking men came in wearing topis and ordered chiyā, which the sahuni served them in whiskey glasses. I heard them muttering to themselves about the whiskey glasses, and I jokingly asked if their drinks were spiked but they answered no without apparently appreciating my attempt at humor. They just said they didn’t drink. But the younger Bahun chimed in from behind me, saying nowadays only 2% of the world’s population doesn’t drink, implying that a lot of the world’s population (e.g. high-caste Hindus, Muslims, children) are drinking more than we think they do. I said I lived for two years with African Muslims and never saw them drink. He agreed, saying Africans are very “sojho” people. (I wonder whether he really thought this or if he just wanted to agree to be polite. A lot of Nepalis ask me questions about African-Americans with the apparent preconception that they’re all gangsters.) A young Limbu or Rai guy at the table next to us asked how black people got to America. I said a lot had been stolen from their homes at gunpoint and brought to America as slaves. He considered this and then said that that was like what happened here, where the Kirant people had been forced to become Hindus. He added that all “Mongol people” were originally Kirant before their forced conversions. The Bahun elders grumbled about this, and the young Rai man said it’s just what he’d read in textbooks. The old men grumbled on about textbooks but the young Bahun and I tried to reason with the Rai a bit. Sherpas were “Mongol people” but they had never been Kirant, we pointed out. The young man accepted this but eventually he went into the back room and the older Bahuns left without saying goodbye. I had a feeling they would both talk about the others’ foolishness behind each other’s backs, even though they seemed to avoid a direct argument in the teashop.

I said goodbye to the young Bahun and the two Sherpas and went to play futsal.

I voted for the first time this year at the age of thirty-one. I stood in line with all the adult members of my extended family. We talked about politics as we inched towards the voting booth and remarked from time to time about how, despite the slow pace of our progress, we had moved quite a bit in a short time.  Standing in line, I thought about the meaning of our votes and of its role in politics. The significance of the vote seems vaster and more complex than this day and this act. Much more than the summation of the individual choices made by a certain number of the nation’s adult citizens. I thought about how, for as long as I remember, we have been told that what happens in our country is a deviation from some universal norm. But today, I felt certain that we have as much to say, in as fundamental a way as anyone else, about what democracy means (or can mean), and what it means to be responsible towards the community that is one’s country, and beyond.

I was too young to vote when I left Nepal at the age of sixteen and since then I have borne distant witness to the changes in this country, and longed to be a part of them. Now that I am back, with the word permanently tagged to my return with a kind of abandon and affirmation that I believe I could never feel anywhere else, I find that the distance has not been bridged and that it cannot be. If anything, it is inevitable, and that is a good thing.

I did not completely identify with the act in which I was participating. It felt a little bit like a dream. In the first place, my reasons and justifications for casting a vote and making a choice from among those offered appeared vague. But whereas some years ago I might have demanded certitude from myself, I am okay with the ambivalence I felt because I believe it is necessary and even positive. It marks the space that enables me to recognize the limitations of this act and of the field we call national politics, and the need to articulate a much more expansive and thoughtful vision of what needs doing on our part as members of the community that is this country, beyond the act of voting.

There is so much we need to think about and think through, questions of identity, culture, politics and their interface with other aspects of our lives – religion, the relationship between different generations, our history and perhaps most importantly our future. We need to direct more effort and energy towards seriously thinking about the kind of future we want for this country. Having said that, I felt quite strongly the importance of voting this year because it was accompanied by the realisation that politics, whether national or international, however narrowly or broadly defined, includes me, despite any reservations I might have about it. At a time of so many questions about our identity and future, participation and affirmation are as important as dissent, and the search for alternatives.